Around Tripoli, the capital of Arcadia in the central Peloponnese, a panigiri still carries some of its old purpose: bringing the region together in one place to worship, trade and dance. The high point is Tegea in the week of August 15, with the villages of Mount Mainalo keeping their own feast days around it.
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May - September
Panigiria run from May to September, and the season peaks at Dekapentavgoustos - the Dormition, on 15 August - when most villages hold their feast. Each programme is set close to its own saint's day, so the list fills late and empties out of season.
A few kilometres south of the city, at Palaia Episkopi in Tegea, the fair that the whole Peloponnese knows sets up in the week of August 15, the Dormition of the Virgin. At its centre is the church of the Dormition, built in 1888 with funds from the Tegea Association on the ruins of a Byzantine basilica and over the seating of the ancient theatre. After the great vespers on the eve and the feast itself, the icon is carried in procession through the park, while the stalls of the trade fair spread out behind the church. Its roots go back to the Frankish period and run on to 1821. Older visitors remember livestock for sale, woven textiles, farm tools, melons from the surrounding plain and roast suckling pig at the wine stalls, and tens of thousands of people still pass through every year.
Tripoli itself once had its own horse fair: before the war, in the week of Pentecost, markets for horses, mules and donkeys set up around the hill of Georgitsa. Today the city's own big date is September 23, the anniversary of the capture of Tripolitsa in 1821, marked with commemorations and concerts across the city.
In the villages of Mainalo the feasts are closer to family gatherings. In Levidi the square fills on June 23, the eve of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, with clarinet and dancing late into the night. In Alonistaina the feast of Agia Paraskevi on July 26 draws people from the surrounding villages every year. Winter has its own party: on the last Sunday of Carnival, Dimitsana, the village whose powder mills supplied the War of Independence, hangs the Makaronas in its square - an effigy packed with gunpowder that, the story goes, ate all the macaroni of Cheese Week - and sets it alight to shouting and laughter.
The Tegea fair at Palaia Episkopi in the week of August 15: the feast of the Dormition, a procession of the icon through the park and a large trade fair behind the church, with roots in the Frankish period. See the current calendar on Mood.
Levidi celebrates on June 23, the eve of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, and Alonistaina on July 26 for Agia Paraskevi, both with live music in the square. Other mountain villages keep their saint's days through the summer - check Mood for what is coming up.
A carnival custom on the last Sunday before Lent: an effigy stuffed with gunpowder is paraded through the lanes of Dimitsana with its mock mourners, then hung and burned in the central square.
